Nigh on every evening when I come home from work I am confronted with carnage. Sofas and blankets made into tents, a carpet of toy food and unidentifiable pieces of plastic toy, and a sprinkling of real food debris. And somewhere hidden amongst it two little monsters with angelic grins, and a weary, weary looking Daddy.
But the riots are connected to the family in more serious ways.
David Cameron spoke in Parliament last week about the rioters coming from dysfunctional families, and elsewhere about a “sickness” in part of society. I’m glad of one thing: that these riots have sparked a debate of sorts about whether or not we need to crack down or look a bit harder at what is behind all of this and work out how to stop it happening again. But so far as I can tell there is not much being said about the intergenerational nature of this social problem we all acknowledge but struggle to understand.
On Friday we were treated to the heartwarming story of a London Borough which has served an eviction notice on the Mother of a man charged with an offence related to the rioting. Quite apart from the question of this Mother’s culpability, her son’s culpability has not yet even been established. Judging from the article linked to above this is not going to be an isolated action. I struggle to see how this kind of approach can be anything but counterproductive (if it is successful, which remains to be seen). Instead of one socially disengaged youngster you end up with a whole family which is homeless, resentful, and probably a greater burden on society in the long run. The leader of Wandsworth Council, Ravi Govindia, essentially adopted a “not my problem mate” approach to questions about the consequences of making this family intentionally homeless [edit: on Radio 4s PM programme on Friday]. But it will be somebody’s problem and somebody will have to pick up the tab.
I won’t have been the only family lawyer watching the cctv footage of the looting and violence with fingers crossed, hoping that I won’t see one of my care clients or their children peeking out from under a hoodie. I’d like to see the stats on the proportion of care leavers, looked after children, and children with a CP or CIN Plan. Based on an entirely unscientific random sample of tv interviews I’ve seen, a high proportion of the rioters were from poor and underprivileged backgrounds and judging from their almost universal inarticulacy are probably not highly educated. Clearly the rioters are not a homogenous, and there have been examples reported of rioters who are in employment, indeed in public service, but I certainly haven’t seen any Charlie Gilmour types.
And the point is this: we remove children from the care of parents whose care is neglectful, dangerous or just plain bad. That may (or may not) improve the life chances for that child, and may (or may not) improve the chances of them being a valuable, engaged member of society. But it doesn’t stop the parents being poor parents. And it doesn’t stop them getting knocked up again. And again. And again. So it’s no kind of solution on a societal level. Its a very expensive way to do things. Costly on both a financial and a human level.